Posted
by
simoniker
on Sunday November 09, 2003 @03:15PM
from the mechner-assault dept.

Thanks to GameSpot for their feature documenting the final hours of development on Prince Of Persia: The Sands Of Time, Ubisoft's update of the classic '80s platform adventure. The piece follows the development team as they squash the final, most obscure bugs, such as "...the disappearance of the head of the female character, Farah, if you leave the game on for more than 12 consecutive hours", and elsewhere, IGN PS2 rate the results as "the perfect realization of the franchise in 3D." GameSpy also has a set of features on the game, with the Xbox version's review largely positive, proclaiming "this prince is no pauper", while 1UP spell out the bonuses for each version, including "PS2: The entire original Prince of Persia... Xbox: The entire original Prince of Persia 2... GC/GBA: The entire original Prince of Persia, unlockable via the GBA or GameCube."

You can probably get it with an AR, but I got original Metroid by beating Metroid Fusion on my GBA and uplinking it to the GC. (Still haven't beaten Metroid Prime to get the other Metroid connection bonus, I'm at the giant Omega Pirate and haven't had the interest/stamina to beat it yet...)

I initially thought the same thing, but upon rereading the (very very short) article it looks like you do NOT need a GBA to actually unlock the origonal Prince of Persia on the GameCube version. But, should you have both, and unlock both, then you'll get the bonus of regenerating health.

While I am annoyed with games like Metroid Prime requiring you to have both a GC and a GBA and a link cable and the two games to unlock something that arguably should just be unlockable on the GC, that doesn't seem to be th

not really. "GC/GBA: The entire original Prince of Persia, unlockable via the GBA or GameCube. Connectivity between the two will also allow for automatic health regeneration on the GameCube game."

which in my opinion translates into: you don't get to play it(the bonus, original prince of persia) if you just own gameboy color(such has appeared in few other games as well.. that you get extra content if you have a gba).

"GC/GBA: The entire original Prince of Persia, unlockable via the GBA or GameCube. Connectivity between the two will also allow for automatic health regeneration on the GameCube game."

which in my opinion translates into: you don't get to play it(the bonus, original prince of persia) if you just own gameboy color(such has appeared in few other games as well.. that you get extra content if you have a gba).

It says the original Prince of Persia will be unlockable via the GBA or the GameCube. The 'or' in tha

"...the disappearance of the head of the female character, Farah, if you leave the game on for more than 12 consecutive hours",

This is an example of the increasing realism in video games.

In real life, too, if you game for more than 12 consecutive hours, your wife or goirlfriend is apt to lose her head over it. Or more succinctly, if you game for more than 12 consecutive hours, dude, you won't be getting any head.

I played the demo, but my reserve copy got here today at my local Gamestop, and I've got about an hour of gameplay into it. The full game doesn't disappoint; smooth beautiful graphics (with several nods to the animation style from the original 2d games), the fighting is great (particularly with the slow/reverse time effects you can use) and the jumping puzzles are yet to be impossible (and thanks to the reverse time of the dagger, you can rewind to retry the difficult jumps a limited number of times, but save points are sufficiently frequent to not make this a problem).

I just have one question:
1. Did they fuck up the fighting? In both of the original POP games the sword fighting was all about timing and control. Too many of the modern 3D games seem to rely on button mashing or pulling off annoying combos. While I saw mention of combos on the site about the game, are they really required, or can one rely on careful timing and control still. Along with that, can I control the blocking? This pissed me off to no end in Jedi Knight 2 and Jedi Academy, no control of my bl

Yes, you have control over your own blocking, and yes, timing and control are the keys to winning fights, especially later on. Tougher enemies block constantly, so you either have to time your attacks so you hit them right when they're trying to strike, or you have to pull carefully timed counterattacks or maneuver in such a way that you can hit them from behind. This can be fairly difficult when you have 4 tough guys ganging up on you, but the ability to rewind time certainly helps.:)

This game has been getting rave reviews, but so far all of the ones that I've read have left me with the same nagging question: Will there be a selectable difficulty level? After Devil May Cry, Shinobi, and recently Kingdom Hearts on Expert Mode, most action games are just getting a bit too easy for me, and that lead to my complete disinterest in Devil May Cry 2.

Has anyone seen anything about this? Perhaps a Hard Mode is unlockable after you beat the game? Or maybe the reviews didn't think that a selectabl

There's no difficulty selection on the PS2 version, though you could easily handicap yourself by never picking up any life or sand extensions.

Having said that, the experience of playing the game is so enjoyable that I'd go back to it over and over again even if there weren't a way to handicap myself. The game might seem a little overrated at first, but once you get into it it's almost impossible to break away.

While the PS2 unlockable (original Prince of Persia) is a big draw for me, I'm curious to know what the PC version will have for extras - both PoP1 and PoP2? Nothing at all?

This is a game I expect to be ported to OS X in time (a good chunk of Ubisoft's titles are making it that way these days - thanks, Aspyr!), and what's on the PC version will decide if I get the PS2 or wait for the PC/possible OS X version.

One of the best things about the original game was the one hour time limit and unlimited lives system. Almost all of the games back then had a system where you got X number of lives and sometimes Y number of continues and that was it. The system isn't much different today, except that in many games you get one life, but you can reload your saves until you get carpel-tunnel syndrome. In prince of persia you have unlimited lives; you respawn at the start of the level, of which there are 12, but you only have 60 minutes to complete the game. And I must say that getting to the last boss with a minute and a half left on the clock is much more nerve racking that getting to the end of a FPS with 15 health, because even with 15 health you can always shoot dodge save, shoot dodge save...

Other aspects of the ingenuity of the game also stand out. You could do an amazing number of things with just the four arrow keys and shift, which are the only controls in the game. I won't bore you with all of them, but the system is truely ingenius, although the sword fights could have been a little more complicated.

I also loved the doppleganger; it took me so many tries to figure out how to defeat him at the end of the game. Ever time you hit him it hurts you, if you have more health than him then you die when you kill him anyway, all of the ledges nearby are fatal falls (so you can't just knock him down to a lower level), and if you try to run past him he'll just kill you.

I still have Prince of Persia (the original DOS version) on my laptop, and I play it when I'm bored and I have ~45 minutes to kill.

I was pretty young when it came out, so I just got enjoyment from running and dieing on the booby traps in various interesting ways. I also spent a lot of time changing directions on cliff edges to watch him do the turning around animation in midair and run back onto solid ground. I was just blown away by how smooth the prince was.

For the second one, I just spent lots and lots of time killing guys on the dock until they overwhelmed me.

I had my fun watching the enemies die on the booby traps in various ways. If there was the opportunity to knock an enemy into a booby trap instead of just finishing them off with the sword, then I always had to go that route. It was fun watching him start to put the sword away, then seeing the metal jaws "chomp" down on the enemy, blood running down the sides of the blades.

I just wish that they had put BOTH of the original PoP games as unlockables, instead of just one. And why-oh-why did they put #2 onl